Monday, August 24, 2009

A renaissance of my mind

Another trip, and once again to Italy! But this time around it was truly a trip worth remembering for many years to come. Anastasia and myself had planned a triple-threat experience of the three places in Italy each and everyone has to visit in their lifetime, but ended up having much more then we even thought would be there.

So the plan we had was as follows:- 3 days in Venice- 3 days in Florence- 1 day in Pisa- and another 1 day in Venice on our way back

But this is what it ended up being:- 3 days in Venice mixed in with the Lido Island- 2 days in Florence- 1 day in Pisa- 1 day in Sienna- 1 day of partial Venice, and Murano + Burano Islands

Simply astonishing trip. Probably the most notable moments I should mention is the complete overthrowing of so many ideas that I had in my head of my own self that have occurred while being in Florence, and the magnificent and spontaneous trip to Sienna, which ended up being the most beautiful place I have seen in my life. Now I need to make sure I sharpen up on painting before I head there again, because I cannot afford NOT to paint that place.

To describe what I mean by the renaissance of my mind I need to start by saying that there is probably no human being in history who I have looked up to more then Leonardo da Vinci. I in no way want to say I feel as genius as he was, but I have to say I can relate immensely to the way that he always hungered for knowledge in so many areas of his life. I cannot say that I will ever be willing to just focus on one area alone as my main focus of life as I simply feel that whenever I start attempting that, I start loosing the feel of what I really am, of what I can do and achieve. Whenever I look around me, I realize just how much there is to learn, how amazing this world is. Just look at the bubbles of this coke on my table, those bubbles alone represent some amazing combination of chemicals, molecules, biological products and what not to create the taste, the color, the gas inside. Then think of how that taste is interpreted by our mind. How the color is interpreted by our eyes, the smell. How it then affects our body, or maybe not just our body, but the environment at all.Then I look at the orange I toss in my hand. And it suddenly hits me, that for that object to go up in the air, my own hand has to create a force which is greater then the actual force of gravity! Just think of that in the scope of what we, humans are capable of! Sure, it is not something new, none if this is new, but the sheer realization of these marvels make it feel absolutely overwhelming. I then realise how those people such as Newton or Leonardo himself felt when those ideas hit them. Yes, for them the ideas were at the right time, but even as times change, and Newton's laws are a common thing of understanding, and even have been proven to not be always right if applied on elements which are much much smaller then those we perceive with our eyes, STILL the feel of Marvel in the face of this world makes it so much more interesting to wake up and keep going trying to understand this Marvel we call Nature, and it's creations. All we really need to do is to open our eyes. We just need to LOOK! There is so much to see! Those who cannot look, need to listen, as there is so much to hear! And those who cannot see or hear need to touch, for either of these three sences have the ability to discover so much about our world that it will fill our life with amazing feel of constant discovery! Yes, we need to read books, but just like it was said by Leonardo "Wisdom is the daughter of experience" ("Leonardo da Vinci Notebooks", Irma A. Richter, T. Wells, M. Kemp, 2008 Edition, Oxford World's Classics) meaning that without the experience of our own, none of this knowledge will matter to us.

So yea, this was a rumble of thoughts that I had after this trip. To finish off the rumbling about, I leave you with some sketches and a drawing of Michelangelo's David from the original sculpture while sitting for 3 hours in front of it in Galleria dell Accademia in Florence.